{"id":2951,"date":"2010-06-25T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2010-06-25T23:48:14","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T04:48:14","slug":"diet-pop-culture-choice-quotes-from-diet-paperbacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/diet-pop-culture-choice-quotes-from-diet-paperbacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Diet Pop Culture – Choice Quotes from Diet Paperbacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a sort of unofficial hobby of collecting diet paperbacks — something about them fascinates me in the same way I am fascinated by infomercials. <\/p>\n

Not only are they often unintentionally hilarious, but they have a certain formula and flavour that promises to reveal something about how marketing, emotion, and motivation interact.<\/p>\n

So I’ve gathered a small collection over time. (I buy them used. For one thing, I enjoy the older ones for their vintage charm, but I also figure I’m doing a public service by removing them from the market, while not directly lining the pockets of the authors.) But collecting and actually reading them<\/em> are two different things, requiring different moods. <\/p>\n

Lately, I’ve found myself in the reading mood, and I’ve stumbled across some truly bizarre gems. Here’s one for today:<\/p>\n

“About seventeen years ago a very close friend of mine said in a moment of anger, ‘Look, Blimpo, why don’t you just go over there and be fat!’ Blimpo? Me? This statement affected me as if someone had taken a big steel pot, put it over my head, and smashed it with a metal spoon.”<\/p>\n

–Fit for Life<\/strong>, Diamond, 1985<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a lot of hilarity to be unpacked here, the most obvious being, to me, that the steel pot\/metal spoon scenario would swiftly become violent reality if one of my “very close friends” talked to me like this. <\/p>\n

But the underlying message here is that verbal abuse is a good motivator to lose weight…rather than a good motivator to administer a well-deserved ass-kicking.<\/p>\n

Just think of all that wasted calorie-burning potential.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Share your bits of diet culture ridiculousness in comments.<\/a><\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a sort of unofficial hobby of collecting diet paperbacks — something about them fascinates me in the same way I am fascinated by infomercials. Not only are they often unintentionally hilarious, but they have a certain formula and flavour that promises to reveal something about how marketing, emotion, and motivation interact. So I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diet-pop-culture","category-diets","tag-fit-for-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pw16f-LB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2986,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatnutritionist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}